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Release date:
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July 29, 2016 (Kerala), August 5 (Delhi)
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Director:
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Shanavas K. Bavakutty
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Cast:
Language:
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Shane Nigam, Shruthy
Menon, Vinay Forrt, Alencier Ley Lopez
Malayalam
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Kismath has a self-deprecating air of being a small film.
Do not be misled by its modesty. It is large in ways that the arts are meant to
be: large-hearted, open-minded, intelligent, aware and enriching, with a
worldview that encompasses the nuances of Kerala society yet mirrors realities
across India. This is, in fact, a very big film.
Debutant Shanavas
K. Bavakutty’s Kismath is a
remarkably understated account of a couple driven apart by social barriers.
Irfan is Muslim. Anitha is Hindu. He is from a well-off family. She is
financially less privileged and a Scheduled Caste. In a social milieu that
deems it essential for a man to be older, wiser and wealthier than his woman
partner, she is 28, he is 23. They are residents of the small town of Ponnani.
They are in love. And though nobody in the entire damned vicinity of their
lives seems to notice or care, they are good friends.
Anitha and Irfan
are conscious of the hurdles in the path of their relationship. As an audience
we too have read reports of the ugly ongoing ‘love jihad’ campaign exemplified
by the pressure and threats against a couple from Meerut – he a Muslim, she a
Hindu – in the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh by-elections of 2014. This awareness
on both sides of the screen builds up a sense of foreboding from the moment we
first meet the pair at the centre of Kismath.
The youngsters have
already faced some aggression from their respective families and so, to
pre-empt any eventualities, they head off to a police station in Ponnani to
seek protection. There they discover what they ought to have known already:
that the police do not emerge from a vacuum but are drawn from the same
prejudiced society they are trying to escape. What follows is their battle on
multiple fronts – against his relatives, her relatives, extra-familial
busybodies and the people in uniform – over perhaps 24 hours in educated,
seemingly progressive Kerala.
Even before their
saga unfolds, a minor episode at the police station gives us an idea of the
insights and detailing to expect from Kismath.
It should have given Anitha and Irfan an idea of what they were in for too. An
Assamese man is accused of causing a road mishap involving two locals. The chap
does not speak Malayalam, but when SI Ajay C. Menon enters the picture, he
communicates with him via Hindi and physical aggression, and manages to extract
some of the truth of what happened. Unlike Tamil Nadu, which has vehemently
resisted and prevented the effort to impose Hindi as a national language on
non-Hindi-speaking India, Kerala tends to look up to Hindi bhaashis and view the ability to speak the language as something
of a virtue of a superior race. Meanie Menon has a swagger, his fluency in
Hindi adds to it.
This adjunct to the
main plot throws up other asides: all the cops know that the guy involved in
the accident is Assamese, but they casually persist with calling him a Bengali
(a moment of introspection for south Indians who get irritated when north
Indians club all “south ke log”
together as “Madrasis”); and when Menon learns where he is from, he immediately
asks if he is a terrorist. The police station, you see, is a microcosm of the
world outside.
The rest of Kismath is just as acutely observed.
Interestingly, Anitha and Irfan speak of living together, not marriage. Equally
interesting – and disturbing – are the unsavoury insinuations made about both
of them by various parties. It is fashionable to romanticise small-town and
village life but the film, at one point, gently reminds us that the impersonal
nature of big cities can spell freedom from some shackles for marginalised and
oppressed groups.
It is a relief too
that Anitha and Irfan are not presented as an immature couple who were floored
by each other at first sight. In that little town that is home, past gender
segregation and communal biases, they meet by sheer chance, they hang out
together for believable reasons, he does not stalk her (whew!), they become
friends and gradually begin to see each other as potential life companions.
Miracles do happen, after all.
Writer-director
Bavakutty has been quoted in The Times of India saying Kismath is “inspired
by an incident that happened in the lives of a 28-year-old scheduled caste girl
and her 23-year-old boyfriend, a B.Tech student, at Ponnani in 2011” when he
was the Municipal Councillor of Ponnani. Some reactions to Kismath have compared it to Ennu Ninde Moideen, last year’s
critically acclaimed hit starring Prithviraj Sukumaran and Parvathy, because it
too was based on a true story of an inter-community romance in the state. With
due respect to Moideen fans, I felt
that film started out with immense promise but ended up being emotionally
manipulative, high-pitched and exasperating. Kismath is none of the above: it is realistic, matter-of-fact and
concise.
Shane Nigam and
Shruthy Menon have likeable personalities, and deliver low-key, convincing
performances as Irfan and Anitha. The pick of the talented cast though is Vinay
Forrt as the corrupt, creepy cop who allies with their relatives.
It could have been
called Love In The Time of ‘Love Jihad’,
Dalit Suppression, Sexism, Casteism, Parochialism, and A Pretence of Liberalism.
Frankly, the film should have been called anything but Kismath (meaning: destiny). Because it is not about what fate does
to its helpless victims, it is about misery by human design and the manner in
which we go about destroying lives with our ignorance and bigotry.
The misplaced title
is one of my very few problems with this film. The other would be its failure
to address one important aspect of Anitha and Irfan’s relationship. Before the
couple fall in love, we learn that Irfan dropped out of an engineering course,
is whiling away his time at home, is unemployed, living off his family’s money
and already at loggerheads with his father as a result. Considering that he is
mature beyond his years and sensible enough to know the potential dangers they
both face if they persist with their relationship, considering that they both
come across as having their heads on their shoulders, it seems odd that they
thought they could openly continue their romance – even with police protection
– while he is financially dependent on his influential father. Keep in mind
that Anitha herself is a research scholar with an old mother to take care of.
Irfan’s purposefulness towards her does not gel with his aimlessness elsewhere.
That said, Kismath is brave and well worth a visit
to a theatre. It was released in Kerala on July 29, and has travelled to Delhi
a week later. I watched a subtitled version in the Capital – considering how
whimsical producers, distributors and exhibitors are in this matter, do inquire
about subtitles at your local hall. The subs had some spelling errors, which
are annoying for an (ex-)editor, you may perhaps be more forgiving. Still, to
the extent that I could judge when I occasionally glanced at the words flashing
at the bottom of the screen, they conveyed the essence of what was being said.
Non-Malayali film enthusiasts, do note.
It would be easy to
take Kismath for granted because it
does not make a song and dance about anything it says or does. Let us not do
that. There are Irfans and Anithas in many corners of India and their chilling
experiences need to be visited again and again until these horrible human-made
societal walls are brought down. That is what Kismath does in a non-preachy, even tone. With this film, Indian
cinema gets a courageous new voice. Here’s looking at you, Mr Bavakutty.
Rating
(out of five): ***1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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103 minutes
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
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